A 4-day-work-week!

Would we move away from a 5-day work week to a 4-day work week?

The signs are very much there with plenty of companies, from publicly traded ones like ThredUp to Kickstarter and local manufacturers like Advanced RV having made the transition away from five days in the office.

Optimal productivity may not have been achieved yet, but the level of productivity combined with the work-life balance benefits has firms saying they are not looking back.

But even at companies that don’t have the option to eliminate a workday, like an airline, there are methods of breaking up every workday in ways that increase employee productivity, building “recovery breaks” into the day.

Around the world, the idea is becoming more popular. Panasonic — based in Japan, where the government encouraged the shift — has experimented with the concept. Iceland piloted a 36-hour workweek in 2015 with 2,500 people and since then, 90 percent of the country’s population has cut their hours back.

Germany, Finland, and Portugal have experimented with a four-day workweek and the United Arab Emirates initiated a four-and-a-half-day workweek in 2023. Lamborghini announced it is moving ahead with a four-day workweek for its production workers in Italy.

In February, 45 companies in Germany said they would introduce a four-day workweek for half the year and the Dominican Republic has announced a four-day workweek trial, also for a half year.

These are all interesting trends but for service companies in India, it will be all the more challenging to make these transitions. Let us see how it will go forth overall.